


you made this monster. weren't you prepared to love it?

by faedemon



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Manipulation, Mr. Spider, POV Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus, The Web - Freeform, but the general premise of it... who knows!, he's referred to as Jonah, jon gets some much needed vengeance, season 5, the end of it is not something i think will actually happen, the overlap of the entities gets real in this bitch, this is an idea i've had for a while now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon
Summary: “Now, Jon,” Jonah tries to protest. He slips into that old manipulator’s voice, though it doesn’t do much—there is dust in his mouth, and he chokes on it. “What could this possibly accomplish? Killing me won’t un-end the world.” He smiles that old Cheshire grin. There is blood between his teeth.Jon’s face—what little of its features Jonah can see—does not change, but the boot digs just a little further into his chest. “No, it won’t,” Jon agrees, and something inside Jonah goes cold.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 126





	you made this monster. weren't you prepared to love it?

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by [this](https://ceciliaspen.tumblr.com/post/187332329639/meganphntmgrl-meganphntmgrl-do-you-ever) tumblr post.

Jon stands over him, face darkly shadowed with the sun at his back, the only thing clearly visible within his silhouette the unnatural green of his Eyes. Jon has, through all the years Jonah has strung him along, been so _feeble._ So _weak_.

He does not seem that way now.

Here Jonah Magnus lies: dragged from his makeshift temple the Panopticon, lying beneath the boot of his selfish masterpiece. Here is a man he has taken everything from. Here is a man blocking the sun from his face.

“Now, Jon,” Jonah tries to protest. He slips into that old manipulator’s voice, though it doesn’t do much—there is dust in his mouth, and he chokes on it. “What could this possibly accomplish? Killing me won’t un-end the world.” He smiles that old Cheshire grin. There is blood between his teeth.

Jon’s face—what little of its features Jonah can see—does not change, but the boot digs just a little further into his chest. “No, it won’t,” Jon agrees, and something inside Jonah goes cold.

He doesn’t know where Martin or Basira are, or Helen or Annabelle. His world has been reduced to the pressure on his ribcage and the piercing gaze of Jon’s Eyes—the very Eyes Jonah cultivated in him, encouraged to grow. He built up the Archive’s power just for that breaking point of the world’s apotheosis. He did not consider where, from there, it would go. He did not worry it would be turned back against him.

 _Tingly,_ Jonah had said before of his Archivist’s compulsion, and it was. It was juvenile, inexperienced, like a child tugging at its father’s jeans. But that was the _Archivist_.

The _Archive_ holds so much more weight.

Jon’s boot presses down yet further, a painful weight comforting only in that it is mundane. There is the threat of Jon’s Beholding pricking at Jonah’s mind, but it has not penetrated yet. There is just Jon’s shoe. Just his dusty sole.

Jonah chances to lift his head and look Jon in the eye. “Come now, Jonathan. You must know by now how very few options you have left.” He narrows his gaze, and, with a little extra _oomf_ in his voice, he says, “Join me in the Panopticon. You will never run out of things to _See_.”

Jon jerks his foot downward, and Jonah hears a _crack_ that can only mean bad things for this body’s ribs. The knife-like sensation of being Beheld intensifies, and his mind feels inflamed as though with infection, the way it pulsates against the invasion. It’s almost worse that Jon doesn’t parse through his mind—just lets him lay there, Watched.

Jonah Magnus has made a mistake.

“You made a mistake in making me, Jonah,” Jon says softly. Dangerously. “For all that it was your ritual I read, this is _my_ apocalypse. I wrought it. I Know it better than you ever could.”

Jon moves his foot, but before Jonah can try to scoot away, he’s grabbed roughly by the collar and hauled to his knees. Jon leans down to whisper in his ear.

“The Eye is not the only entity here, Jonah, and giving a slice of me to all of the others was not your best move.” The hand at his neck grows hot, and Jonah begins to comprehend. “Not when they’re all the same, in the end—just too wide for us to take in all at once.”

The scar on Jon’s throat runs red. There begins to come a squirming from his worm scars. Around them, the wind picks up, and the ground Jonah’s back lies on feels as though it is sinking.

Jonah Magnus has made a _mistake_.

Jonathan Sims is not the Archive. That title is far too Eye—no, Jonathan Sims is a _Conduit_ , and Jonah can See it now: how each of the Great Terror’s extremities have found their way to this one man, have anchored in him like they’ve always lived there.

“It’s all just Fear, Jonah,” Jon murmurs, his mouth still ever so close to Jonah’s ear. “And you gave it to me.” Jon pulls back, stands again, and Jonah is left there kneeling before him.

It all swells: all fifteen of the entities Jonah knows and countless phantoms of others he hasn’t yet dreamt of. The Eye pierces into him and the rest gather at the edges, tearing at him, pulling. It is an enormous, agonizing pressure, something he’d liken to the experience of moving his eyes between bodies, and then—and then—

And then it’s all gone, even the dull gaze of the Eye he knows so well. Jonah gazes up at Jon, expecting—something. Some kind of defeat, maybe, for lacking the resolve to go through with Jonah’s destruction.

He does not find it.

Instead, Jon looks down at Jonah with disgust. Not just disgust—with an utter lack of concern. Jon has lost the capacity to care about Jonah, about anything he does, whether with rage or with fear. And, in that instant, Jonah knows he has lost the only foothold he has.

He can’t see Martin or Basira. Tim and Sasha are dead. Daisy—oh, she’s dead too, now. Melanie and Georgie are… nowhere. There is no one. There is no leverage.

There is only Jon, his Archive. The Conduit.

A monster made by the fallen king of a ruined world.

“You picked me because I had already been marked by the Web,” Jon says, and it’s not a question. “And you have been guiding me along like a puppeteer ever since. It’s a wonder you didn’t see the overlap between the Entities sooner. You’re a manipulator at your core.”

Jonah is silent. He cannot be anything else, for though the pressure has receded, Jon’s presence holds him there just as rigidly.

“This is a fitting conclusion, I think,” Jon continues, almost idly. “Something to bring it back around to where it all began.”

Jon raises his left arm, making an L shape. Casually, like breathing, he tips his knuckles back against the open air, just twice. “Knock, Knock,” he says in time with it, and as his hand raps backward, it echoes out as though on real wood. The Spiral and the Web have always been so very close.

There is, where there was not before, a door. It stands dark and tall on the bare dirt, and Jonah almost expects Helen to emerge from it, but he knows better. He barely has time to curse himself as the door begins to open, and Jon steps away.

**MR. SPIDER IS EVER SO HUNGRY, MAGNUS.**

**Author's Note:**

> heyo. let me know what you think in the comments please! they mean a lot to me :-)
> 
> also, i came up with this idea largely on my own, but part of it subconsciously can probably be credited to my friend moss & an AU idea he had!!! shoutout to you dude


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